The distance between the jungles of Myanmar and cell phone screens in Lisbon, Porto or another Portuguese region has never been so short. What began as a regional problem in Southeast Asia became, in 2025, a global crisis with a “tip” well established in the Portuguese-speaking world.
Investigations by the Reuters news agency and reports from international authorities reveal that today the country has consolidated itself as an authentic “State of Scams”, where organized crime operates with the precision of a technological multinational, but with methods of medieval slavery. However, with the technology of the modern world, its reach is global, with Portugal being one of its victims.
This rise did not occur organically, but rather by taking advantage of an unprecedented power vacuum. According to Reuters and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the country’s transformation is the direct result of the military coup in February 2021. The dismissal of the civilian government plunged the former Burma into war and an administrative collapse that left the borders without any effective control. The Military Junta, isolated by sanctions and desperate for funding, began to tolerate and actively profit from illicit activities in exchange for the support of local militias.
This vulnerability attracted Chinese mafias who, between 2022 and 2023, were expelled from Cambodia following a joint crackdown between Beijing and Phnom Penh. Myanmar offered the perfect refuge: “Special Economic Zones” controlled by Ethnic Armed Groups such as the Border Guard (BGF).
In these territories, where the national police have no authority, the Triads found luxury infrastructure originally built for casinos, which were quickly converted into centers for industrial-scale fraud operations. Geography sealed the region’s fate: complexes such as Shwe Kokko and Myawaddy are located just a few kilometers from the border with Thailand, which initially allowed the use of Thai cell phone networks.
Even with blockades and power cuts, the massive use of Starlink terminals (connecting to satellite internet) and industrial electrical generators ensures that these criminal city-states remain operational, financing private armies through global digital theft, Reuters confirmed on the spot.
The schematics in detail
Within these complexes, the crime industry is organized by specialized departments that use psychology manuals and conversation guides to refine attacks. At the top of the hierarchy is the Pig Butchering (pig slaughter, in literal translation). In this scheme, the criminal builds a relationship of trust with the victim over months, simulating a digital friendship or romance. Through fake “white label” platforms that show fictitious profit graphs, scammers convince the target to invest all their savings in cryptocurrencies. The “slaughter” occurs when the victim tries to raise the funds and is faced with having to pay non-existent “release fees” or “taxes”, ending up losing all the capital.
Although there are such cases in Portugal, the most visible aspect of this system in our country is “task scams” via WhatsApp. In these cases, these networks operate through a recruitment funnel in which the victim receives small payments (5 to 10 euros) for simple tasks, such as liking videos or reviewing hotels, just to prove false legitimacy. Once the user is attracted to “VIP” Telegram groups, they are asked to make large deposits to unlock higher value tasks, at which point contact is cut off and the money disappears.
Additionally, authorities have identified the rise of “Recovery Scams”, where criminals contact previous victims posing as lawyers who promise to recover funds for new upfront fees.
If the Portuguese are the preferred financial targets, CPLP citizens — especially Brazilians — are often the victims of human trafficking that supports this mechanism. In most of these cases, the scammers They are attracted by false promises of technological jobs in Thailand but, upon arrival, they are transported to Myanmar. There, their passports are confiscated and they are forced to work 16 hours a day under threat of torture and electric shocks. If they do not reach the fraud targets, they are sold between complexes as merchandise.
Alerts that PJ is up to BdP
The seriousness of the situation has already led the Judiciary Police (PJ) and the Bank of Portugal (BdP) to issue urgent alerts in the last months of this year. In October and November, authorities warned of the multiplication of calls from national numbers that use spoofing to simulate proximity.
Furthermore, the PJ’s National Cybercrime Combat Unit (UNC3) denounced, in December, campaigns of phishing who abusively use the police logo to scare citizens with false legal notifications, aiming only to capture banking credentials and personal data.
The challenge remains herculean. The location of these centers in areas of total impunity, controlled by militias allied with the military junta, makes extradition almost impossible. As Reuters describes, money laundering is spread through global networks of “money mules” and stablecoins, like USDT, making financial tracking extremely complex. Faced with this scenario, digital awareness and skepticism have become the first and most effective line of defense for citizens around the world, including Portugal.